


Some Years Green Thrives

by stillane



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Fix-It, M/M, Post-Season/Series Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:54:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27661646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillane/pseuds/stillane
Summary: Bobby nods like Dean’s finally found the corner piece of the puzzle, reaches over and squeezes his shoulder, and the ache of missing him flares up like it never left. “Well, you got time. Go figure it out, and let me know what you came up with when you get back.”
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 21
Kudos: 96





	Some Years Green Thrives

**Author's Note:**

> It’s 2020 and I care about SPN again. I have _opinions_. Fuck me, folks.
> 
> Anyway, as is only right, everyone is taking a shot at an ending that makes them happy. I figured I’d tailor my own bespoke fix-it and then go wild reading everybody else’s, and that’s how we got here.
> 
> This follows along with 15x20 for a while and then goes rogue at the point with… ah, well, the point. The big goodbye gets to stay, but everything after that takes a slight left turn.

Sam’s going to be okay, and that’s the last thing Dean had left to worry about. He makes his peace, closes his eyes, and lets go of it all.

Bobby meets him on the steps of Ellen’s place, and that’s good enough proof there’s been some kind of interference on his behalf. The universe has never been that kind before. Finding out that that interference came wrapped in a familiar trench coat is enough to finally quiet that howling place in the back of his head where he locks down all his regrets. Cas is okay, Jack is okay, his mom and his dad and everyone he ever lost is okay. 

He and Bobby sit on the porch and drink terrible beer and talk about all the ways that everything is perfect here. If it doesn’t feel quite perfect, well, who’s he to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

Except then there’s a lull in conversation, and Bobby sighs. “It’s good seeing you, Dean.” 

Dean doesn’t know what to do with the weird finality in that.

“Why…” He frowns. “I thought you could go anywhere now. Why’s it sound like you’re not sticking around?”

“Oh, I am.” He takes a nonchalant swig of his beer. “You ain’t.” 

“But… I’m done.” He clears his throat, tries to make it sound less like a question. “Bobby, I’m _done_. Went out like I always knew I would and everything.”

Bobby’s entire opinion of that is a snort.

Dean shakes his head. “No, but… How would I get back?” The note of hope in there sneaks up on him.

“Already told you Cas was back in play, didn’t I?” Bobby’s eyebrow calls him an idiot. “And not for nothing, but you raised _God_ , boy.”

Dean... can’t really argue with that. Jack’s hands-off status seems to end at the pearly gates, and slipping Dean back through them might be on the table. Taking the logistics out of it leaves him dangling from his real question, though.

“What would I even _do_ , Bobby?” 

Bobby grins. “What do you want to do?”

Dean opens his mouth and doesn’t find an answer waiting on his tongue, wheels spinning on new ground.

Bobby’s smile goes softer. “Kid, you’ve spent half a life living for everybody else. Maybe try something different for the other half,” he suggests.

He mulls it over for a second. Takes a drink of the shitty, perfect beer in his hand just for something to do and thinks some more. “Huh.” 

Bobby nods like Dean’s finally found the corner piece of the puzzle, reaches over and squeezes his shoulder, and the ache of missing him flares up like it never left. “Well, you got time. Go figure it out, and let me know what you came up with when you get back.”

*

He blinks, and opens his eyes to a dirty barn roof and Sam’s scared face. He looks like a strong breeze might break him.

“Hey, Sammy,” he tries, gentle as he knows how to be, and Sam hauls him in with a strangled laugh. It cracks into something wetter, and Dean hangs on with all he’s worth through the breakdown. 

He knows Sam’s run out of steam when the shaking settles down, and still neither of them let go. The worry starts to eat at Dean, though. “So, uh,” he raises his head from Sam’s shoulder to ask. “Are you… alright?”

It rattles Sam out of the post-grief come-down a little, so that’s a win. He pulls back enough to stare at Dean, and Dean watches his brain click back online. 

“Cas… was here. He, uh, healed you,” Sam’s eyes flicker over and back from what Dean’s guessing is a gruesome scene behind him. “And then he said everything would be okay, and.. it was?”

Dean nods along with him at the end and Sam blinks. “You don’t seem surprised.”

“Bobby tipped me off.”

That gets him another blink, plus Sam’s mouth opening and closing like a fish, and he suddenly understands how much fun Bobby must have been having there for a bit. “I’ll tell you all about it, but we should probably go find those kids. Place is a tetanus shot waiting to happen.” He rolls his shoulder, just to feel where the hole in him isn’t anymore.

He feels a little bad when Sam flinches, but one of the many fucked-up, unique Winchester life skills is rolling with getting undead. Sam pulls him up to his feet, and they go find the kids, and they drop them off on the doorstep of the local fire station.

And maybe Sam doesn’t get outside of a six-foot radius from him for the day and a half it takes them to wrap everything up and get home, but Dean’s not complaining. 

*

Big as it is, the bunker feels too small. He makes it through a couple hours in there before winding up sitting on the hill outside just after sunset, Miracle pressed up against his left side and Sam damn near doing the same on his right. 

“You realize we’re the only people on earth who actually know the big answers?” He cocks his head at Sam. “We could start one hell of a cult.”

“We’re not starting a cult, Dean.”

“I’m just saying. Wouldn’t even have to lie. ‘God’s a good kid and heaven rocks now, sign up here,’ you know?” 

Sam snorts and throw a handful of grass at him, and Dean can’t make himself care about the dumb grin on his own face. Sam goes quiet then for a while, but it’s the kind of quiet that says he’s got something big to say. 

“You going to look for Cas?” he asks eventually. There are all kinds of layers in the careful evenness of his voice.

Dean sighs, watches the stars for a minute while the words line up in his mouth until they feel right. “Sam, I think I want to try being happy.” The next part is a little harder to admit, but not as much as he’d have thought. “Think I might start with him.”

There’s time to walk it back. Sam would let him, would probably make it easy on him. Dean fills his lungs with cool night air and lets the part of himself he’d always liked least stay dead.

He keeps his eyes on the sky, but he can feel Sam staring at the side of his face for a long time. “Yeah,” Sam says at last and looks at the sky, too. “Yeah, that seems about right.”

The list of really good, peaceful moments in his life has always been short. Short enough to probably count them on his fingers and have some to spare. Sitting in the grass with his brother and his dog, listening to the crickets and knowing the only big change coming is one he’s reaching for… He might have to kick off his shoes and count toes, at this rate.

Miracle starts getting restless eventually, raising his head off of Dean’s knee and shaking his body out. It’s way past his dinner time.

All three of them get up, but Dean stays standing on the grass. Sam and the dog both look back at him from the steps with twin shaggy head tilts that bring that stupid grin back.

“I’ll be in in a little bit,” he reassures them.

For just a second, suspicion flickers across Sam’s eyes, and that’s fair. They’ve both been dumb enough in the past to warrant it. The look fades quickly, though, into understanding. “You’re doing it now?”

Dean squares his shoulders, shakes the nerves out of his fingers. “I mean, when you figure out what you want, no point wasting time, right?”

His smartass of a brother just grins down at the ground and shakes his head.

“What?”

“Dude,” Sam laughs. “Did you just paraphrase _When Harry Met Sally_?”

“Damn straight.” Hey, look at him out here, owning the things that make him happy. He sees the spark in Sam’s eye at the word choice, though. “Oh, fuck you,” he says, snickering a little himself. “Go call Eileen.”

It’s wild, that this is something they’re talking about - _laughing_ about - but it’s been a hell of a day. A hell of a life, really, and Dean’s abruptly past giving a shit about things that don’t matter. 

Bobby was right. It’s time to try something else.

*

He gives it a few minutes after the bunker door closes before he shuts his eyes, bows his head, and goes for it. 

“Cas, get your feathery ass down here. If I can man up and start this conversation, you can at least show up for it.” He swallows, and the rest comes out softer. “You said you always come when I call. I’m calling, Cas.”

There’s a stone in his gut until the air shifts behind his left shoulder in a way he’d know anywhere. He has to clench his jaw and blink, head still bowed, before he can turn around. Doesn’t bode well that he’s getting weepy already, but fuck it. Cas has seen him worse than this.

Cas, it occurs to him, has seen him every way it’s possible to be, and somehow still wants him.

So he turns and raises his head, and Cas is right there. He meets Dean’s eyes and doesn’t look away. Doesn’t blink, just waits.

He’s holding himself in that way of his that’s somehow a notch up from even his normal stillness. It’s the loose readiness of a soldier and the otherness of something unearthly all in one, enough to send any sane thing backing away fast. 

It makes Dean suddenly aware of his own empty hands. “Hi.”

“Dean.” It’s cautious, uncertain of its welcome. He leans towards Dean, though, just the slightest little bit, like maybe he can’t help it. Like Dean’s got some kind of gravity nobody else has ever noticed.

It’s a sudden rush, knowing he has the power to make the landing soft. “It's okay,” and that’s a voice he’s never heard out of his own mouth. “Cas, it’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

Wanting big things has never been easy, but he thinks he can just about manage wanting small ones. He can want to cross the stretch of grass between them, and he can want to lay a hand on the back of Cas’ neck, and he can want to lean close enough to feel Cas sigh when Dean strokes his thumb over where the grace runs.

He can want those things, and somehow, easy and impossible, Cas gives him all of them. His eyes slip closed, and his hand comes up to anchor around Dean’s wrist. He leans in that last tiny distance, lets their gravity pull his forehead to rest against Dean’s, always meeting him an inch past halfway.

“What happens next?” he asks quietly into the warm space between them.

“We’ll figure it out,” Dean tells him, low and sure and lit up with it. “We got time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the poem Sometimes by Sheenagh Pugh


End file.
